


simultaneously

by anairim



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Humanstuck, M/M, Mentioned Gamzee Makara, Mentioned Rose's Mom | Beta Roxy Lalonde, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 19:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29051301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anairim/pseuds/anairim
Summary: After the function, they close the casket, like, nail it shut, and you find yourself thinking, Jesus Christ, what if she is still alive in there, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ.
Relationships: (hinted), Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Kudos: 19





	simultaneously

It’s a lame ass day to be wearing shades to school on the bus ‘cause it’s been raining for a week and even though the sky occasionally peekaboos thanks to a break in the clouds, the atmosphere is pretty grey, just like your thoughts, just like your morals.

It would be very lame of you to be wearing dark shades to school when it isn’t even summer to begin with, on a rainy Friday, if it weren’t for the fact that you are the coolest kid on this bus.

You, Dave Strider, are excused from both the social and the formal norms to be observed by everyone else; at least the ones regarding sunglasses. Most of the less cool guys around you think of you as a vampire, and you like the myth, so you let it thrive. Even if it’s just the tiniest bit of light, you can’t take it, your eyes are too sensitive and you might go blind from the contact.

 _Yes_ , you think, smiling in your brain, lest someone sees you can actually become utterly amused, _what a perfect day to terrify the fourth-graders._

“Rose,” you say, not too loud, not too feeble. “I’m afraid I’m getting kind of thir-” 

Normally you would be sitting next to John for the ride but now he is too busy trying to learn an entire science book with Jade ‘cause he somehow forgot to do one month worth of homework and he decided he has to make up for that in the thirty minutes the bus takes to get them to school, so today Rose is your bus companion, even though she hasn’t done much to be considered company.

She has been writing stuff on her notebook since she sat down.

She has been annotating stuff on her notebook every evening for the past two weeks, to be fair, and you wouldn’t be so butt-hurt about it if she actually let you read what she is scribbling down all the time. She used to show you when you both were younger, the way you show her your comics before posting them. 

You don’t know what happened that made her think it’s not okay for you to read her thoughts anymore and you kinda wish you did so you can make up for it, but not now.

Now you kinda hate her, ‘cause she is not paying attention to you, nor picking up on your evil plan to scare the younger students. She is ignoring you. You can’t help but think that John would never.

“Karkat, let me sit by Kanaya for a bit.” Rose says, discarding you with a shrug. She leans forward to bump Karkat’s head with her pencil.

“ _Ow!_ You motherfucking scratched it, you absolute moron.” When Karkat raises his voice, which is to say always, he almost sounds like he is croaking. Like a toad.

You find it funny and stupid at the same time, but you don’t laugh.

“Pussy, come on,” Rose insists and Karkat, who can never shut up and is ever so dramatic, gets up massaging his head and says: “Just say that Dave stinks and you would prefer that my nostrils were the ones that end up completely damaged.”

But Rose is already not listening to him, sinking close to Kanaya and showing her her notebook, whispering secrets in her ear. You are a bit offended, not for what Karkat said but for the way Rose is excluding you from her conversation. Maybe it’s not about you, maybe you should talk it out with her later, when you’re home.

“Dude, that’s not a very nice thing to say to a vampire,” you say in the meantime, to Karkat, who just plopped right next to you with a grunt. “I could decide to bite you, you know.”

“For all I care, goddamned bastard,” is his response. “My blood is venomous. It will kill you.”

And it's really hard, but you can manage to not even crack up a smile.

Today is a weird day. Recently, Karkat sits with Gamzee. He used to sit with Sollux but now him and Aradia are a thing, so Karkat has been removed from the best friend status and, usually, Kanaya sits with Vriska, but they seem pissed at each other today for whatever reason, and Terezi, who is usually sitting with her best friend forever Aradia, ended up sitting with Vriska. And they are talking. _And_ they’re not even fighting, which, in a conversation in which one of the parts involved is Vriska, is generally a hard thing to do.

What the fuck is happening? This seems like a warning sign.

“Did you study for science class?” you ask, ever the most causally, to shrug off the feeling that something foul is spoiling the air around you.

You haven’t seen Gamzee yet. He is either late and will arrive during second period or he is sick again. 

“My name’s not Egbert,” Karkat says. “I always study.”

You want to reply something along the lines of: _Yeah, I know._ But you get rudely interrupted by one of the most annoying voices on the planet.

“I would,” Vriska screeches. “But some bitch just didn’t invite _me._ ”

She is almost standing up, sinking one knee deep into the foam of the seat, staring down at where Rose is with the ugliest, most wild grin you have ever seen. You praise yourself to be someone who doesn’t get scared or surprised by much. You can keep a straight face to almost every horror film ever and more than once John told you how amazing you are for that and you have trained to be this cool so it’s hard to get under your skin. 

But this crazy ass girl that’s your classmate. 

She just _radiates_ future murderer vibes.

That’s why you can’t blame your sister for looking completely taken aback and almost kind of _terrified._

Rose can only stutter Kanaya’s name and Kanaya is covering her face with both hands and mumbling with the tiniest voice: “Oh, what could I _do_? She said she wanted to hang out…”

The entire bus is staring into Rose’s direction which is basically to say your direction cause she is melting in her seat just in front of yours.

“Vriska, did you take your fucking pills this morning?” you ask. You don’t know if Vriska has any sort of illness or not. You hope not with all your heart ‘cause in the end you are a good guy and you don’t want anyone to think you’re not but this is the only way you can think of to save your sister from a thirteen year old bully. “Are you hallucinating?”

Rose shoots you a sideways glance.“Dave, shut up!” she sighs.

And there it is: any sort of brotherly sense of protection you might have felt in that moment is gone. Karkat snickers besides you: “She is so lovely!”

“If the bitch can behave,” Rose says then. “She can come.”

The bitch in question gets her knee off the poor seat, clicks her tongue and sits heavily next to Terezi, who is dying laughing. You don’t know if it’s at Vriska, at Rose, or even at you, ‘cause she sends a few amused glances your way.

“Why are girls like this?” you hear John ask from a couple of seats behind you.

Jade’s reply is not an answer: “Rose didn’t want Vriska.” 

She used a hushed tone but if you heard her it’s obviously not quiet enough and, clearly, someone else heard her too, ‘cause it’s only been one minute of silence when Aradia says: “ _We_ didn’t want Vriska.”

And it seems that she had been waiting for that tense silence that followed the altercation ‘cause her voice falls in the most dead and still air.

Vriska clicks her tongue again, she doesn’t even turn around as she spits: “Don’t you fucking worry, you slut. If I come it’s only to rip your pretty braids off your scalp and to spite all of you bitches.”

“What the fuck are you all screaming about, Jesus.” That’s Karkat, who’s stepping into the situation to try and solve it, but he is as usual doing it in the wrong way, ‘cause it seems he wants to pick a fight with the girls and it’s really not the moment for that.

“They are talking about that stupid pyjama party, man,” Sollux says, dragging the _S_ of _stupid_ through his teeth. “The one that Rose organised like a week ago? Also, Vriska, touch my girl and face the consequences of it.”

“Dude, that was the _weakest_ threat, oh my _god._ ” John laughs like an idiot, the science textbook on his knees already forgotten, as Vriska perks up holding her bottom lip with her teeth and and mocking: “Uh— the _conthequentheeth_. Oh, I’m _tho thcared_. I’m _thcared thitlethh_.”

Karkat tries his best to hide the amused grin that Vriska’s impression is plastering on his face as to not seem like he is mocking his friend too, and you think you need to teach him how to keep a poker face always activated.

As chaos breaks around you, you notice Rose crossing her arms. She is disappointed; not what she wanted. You and her are the only people in this bus that are sitting completely still.

Kanaya is looking out the window, Jade is tugging John’s shirt to convince him to go back to studying, Terezi is holding her stomach as she laughs uncontrollably. 

You ask yourself once again, why your own sister didn’t tell you she wanted to host a pyjama party with the girls. It’s not like you wouldn’t have known sooner or later.

You live in the same house.

“I’m sure the party is gonna be lit,” you try to tell her. 

It’s not much, but you can see a pink crack in her dark lipstick and you think she might be wanting to smile a lot under her own poker face. “Shut up.” she says. “You are still not invited.”

* 

That night you realise that you are very wrong.

The party is not lit.

You go in your rooms to take care of your sick beats and to update your comic, as usual on the weekends. The chat with John is open as you work: he is talking about how much his dad is making him wanna kill himself ‘cause he isn’t passing any of his classes and, knowing John’s dad, you think he is probably worrying very much about his son’s mental health and wants to look for tutors to help him study in the afternoons, but maybe you are just reaching.

Maybe he is a pain in the ass like John is making him seem. You just don’t believe a man that bakes seven cakes for his son’s birthday can be that bad.

You still agree with your friend though. You are not an asshole. Of course the dad is being hella annoying. Of course John would rather be dead. 

Hang on tight, little fella.

Things start to go downhill when the girls show up at your house.

Jade is the first one, of course. She shows you her new fuzzy PJs and you let her read your unedited new panels. She laughs like mad and that’s just the beta proof you need. You might be able to post, like, seven new episodes by this evening if you keep working at this pace.

Thanks Jade, you lovely bastard.

Then Kanaya shows up and she brought flowers for your mom and what looks like expensive chocolates. She apologises to Rose even though she probably doesn’t need to and Rose just shrugs and says: “Not a big deal, come on. I’ll show you my room.”

And then you don’t hear the other girls arrive cause you are wearing your headphones. That’s why you don’t notice you door being opened and it’s too late when a hand waves in your peripheral vision. You are so deep in your work you can’t help but yelp a little in your chair.

When you see Terezi standing up in the middle of your room in her PJs smiling at you like a sort of lunatic, you compose yourself. You hope she didn’t notice the way you almost wet your pants like a little baby.

You read her lips as she says _Hey!_ ‘cause the bass in your eardrums is still eating away all external sounds. You reply with a tilt of your head and turn the volume down.

“Bored?” you ask, as you drap your headset around your neck.

Terezi shrugs. “They are talking about periods.” She scrunches up her nose. “I still haven’t got mine.”

You remember when Rose got hers. The way she cried, the stained sheets turning the water pink in the washing machine, the way she got angry ‘cause she didn’t want any children, _ever_.

 _What are they even saying?_ you think, a bit grossed out.

“What are you listening to?” Terezi asks. And she seems genuinely interested so you hand her the headphones. 

She listens intently, pushing the earpieces closer to her face, squishing it deeper as if it might help her to hear more efficiently.

“I like your music,” she says, in a tiny voice you didn’t think Terezi was capable of. “Cool shit.”

And then, after a moment of sinister silence in which Terezi takes the headphones off and leans closer to you to put them on your desk but also to do something else ‘cause she kind of lingers with her back bent over you and you think she is about to do something that she might regret a lot, the screaming begins.

It’s one name being shouted: “Vriska!”

And it’s not Rose’s voice, nor Jade’s. 

It’s Aradia’s.

“There they go!” Terezi says as if she was expecting this moment to come. “I’m gonna go save Aradia’s hair.”

You try to return back to your job, but John keeps sending you ugly memes and making dick jokes and you are pretty sure Terezi was about to kiss you and you are kinda freaking out about it and also, there are four or five screeching girls in the room in front of yours and your mom must not hear them somehow if she is not coming to see what they are up to.

Focusing is impossible.

So you get up and across the hallway to maybe try and solve the problem, even though it’s not really your thing being involved in period talks and whatever other satanic things they might be blabbering about.

You find yourself in hell.

Vriska is holding up a cellphone, probably Aradia’s, judging by the way the other girl in question is straddling Vriska’s arms to try and get it back.

“Vriska, come on,” Terezi is saying. “Aradia’s gonna stop texting her boyfriend.”

“Fuck no!”Aradia screams. “Now _she_ decides what I do?”

“You are disgustingly boring,” Vriska rolls her eyes, while pushing Aradia back.

Rose is holding her legs to her chest, sitting far from the others on the bed, looking defeated. Kanaya seems to be on the verge of tears, or about to punch a bitch, judging by the way she looks at Vriska.

Jade is rolling a dice on the ground, pouting. She looks up at him and tries to smile, then says: “Can we please get back to Monopoly? I was about to come out of pri— ” 

“ _Sollux!_ ” Vriska shouts then, laughing like a maniac, in a pathetic impression of Aradia’s voice, while typing, completely unbothered by the way Aradia is pulling her sleeves. “ _My dear, dear Sollux. I love you… Or I thought I did. See, this party made me realise something…_ ”

Vriska pauses dramatically, then holds two fingers up and spreads them apart. She puts her tongue in the middle and laughs low and loud, and there is something in what she is doing that reminds you of yourself.

Still laughing, she says: “ _I would prefer a lick from a_ fucking _girl!_ ”

It’s then that Aradia jumps on her, fisting her hair and pulling so hard that Dave gets scared Vriska’s air might get snatched from her head. 

Kanaya screams: “You’re ruining everything!”

Someone else, maybe Jade, says: “Stop!”

Terezi is holding Vriska by her waist, trying to pull her away from Aradia’s death grip and Vriska is pushing pushing pushing so hard on Aradia’s ribs that you wonder for a minute how is she still not letting go.

You and Rose move almost simultaneously to go and hold Aradia from the other side, to get her away from Vriska’s blows. Both girls are howling; it’s a weird thing how much humans can become like animals in certain situations.

Blows your mind.

You and Rose move almost simultaneously, but somehow you are both too slow, despite Rose being even closer to the others than you.

You and Rose move almost simultaneously, but in the precise moment you try to grab Aradia’s arm, she is already flying out the open window. 

And it’s Vriska who pushes her, you see it, you see Vriska’s dark painted nails dig up into Aradia’s chest so deep they almost sunk in like claws and then, Aradia is falling head first onto the concrete outside Rose’s window.

Your rooms are not that far up, falling from one of your windows shouldn’t be a big deal. It really shouldn’t.

But you hear the loud, wet _thunk_ Aradia’s head makes while hitting the floor and you can only think: _If she manages to stay alive she is gonna be a vegetable._

You don’t run up to the window, you don’t wanna see, but Rose does. Her shaking hands grab the windowsill till her fingers become white from the pressure.

“ _Mom!_ ” she sobs, and you’ve never heard someone scream this loudly in your life. “ _Mom!_ ”

You wobble a bit on your feet and end up falling to the ground, next to Jade, that’s staring at you with the most terrified look on her face.

“What did you do?!” Kanaya screams, fat wet blobs of tears hanging on to her lashes. “Vriska, _what did you do?_ ”

Terezi falls down to the floor too, pressing her back to the wall covering her ears with her hands, squishing so hard it must hurt, you think. Like she did with your headphones something like five minutes ago. It seems like a year ago. This all seems like a dream.

Vriska is standing in the middle of the room, holding Aradia’s cellphone like she wants to crush it. She is hiding her mouth behind her other hand. If she is screaming nobody can hear her, cause she is pushing so deep as to erase any sound possible.

She is shaking though. And she is crying.

Rose is still wailing. Mom still doesn’t seem to hear her.

You don’t know what to do. So you hug Jade and she holds onto you tightly.

You squint your eyes closed. _It’s just a dream._

* 

The funeral is very much real though. You keep trying to convince yourself it’s a hoax, you keep whispering to John that she is gonna get up from her casket and she is gonna tell you all that she got you and what a stupid prank, Aradia, thank god you’re well please don’t do that ever again.

But she doesn’t.

And then, after the function, they close the casket, like, nail it shut, and you find yourself thinking, _Jesus Christ, what if she is still alive in there, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ._

Here is what you remember about the funeral:

Jade holding onto your hand like you were her fucking anchor, Rose not wearing her black lipstick, John in a suit looking like a fish outside of its pond.

Sollux not really crying for his dead girlfriend and talking about how Vriska would end up in jail sooner or later, Karkat crying so much he fainted on one of the church’s benches and he had to be taken out to get some fresh air, and Terezi, coming up to him after they had buried the casket and covered it with earth, with swollen eyes and red flowers in her hands.

“Yesterday, I got my period,” she said. She straightened up her spine and went to put the flowers on Aradis’s fresh grave.

She said it like it meant something. All grown up.

* 

You are in high school now, and Vriska is still not in jail. Everyone agreed to call Aradia’s death an accident, _The Accident_ , but sometimes, when you are in bed and can’t sleep, you still think of it as a deliberate action.

Rose doesn’t want to talk about it. She really doesn’t show it but it shook her to the core. Being the one to see the dead body did her more bad than good and you honestly can’t blame her for being so distant when the topic starts coming up.

Again, you just wish she would talk to you about stuff, like, how she found out she is gay. It would really interest you and you wouldn’t make fun of her in the slightest, but she doesn’t seem too keen on opening up to you, or to any of your friends recently.

She almost flies down the stairs, now, with her high heels and short orange dress, ready to go to a seniors party since it’s a Friday evening. She makes the car keys clash and she says, once again: “Does any of you want to come?”

None of you answer ‘cause you know it’s not a real question. She wants to be alone with Kanaya, as always. And she doesn’t want to have people around (apart from Kanaya) that keep bugging her about how much she can and cannot drink.

“Whatever,” she says, and she goes away, patting Jade’s head while she makes her way through the kitchen.

“Is she already drunk?” John asks, lifting his eyes up from his maths notebooks that cover the entirety of the kitchen table.

“I’m gonna have a word with Kanaya.” You reply.

“I’m worried about her,” Jade says.

 _I know_ , you want to add. _Who isn’t._

Before starting your daily conversations with Karkat, you thought that Rose was the one that got hit the hardest by the passing of one of your friends.

Karkat tells you Gamzee has started smoking just to feel something.

He tells you Vriska feels so guilty she can’t sleep, nor study, nor close her eyes without seeing Aradia’s face.

He tells you Sollux can go weeks without speaking a word and without eating solid food.

He tells you that Terezi cries herself to sleep every night. He talked a lot about Terezi during the times immediately after the funeral, about how you should have let her go ‘cause he saw her first and you were trying to steal his girl or something.

But then, after convincing him that he didn’t own the girl and that she could do whatever, even get a pair of red shades to match yours and to hide her sudden crying fits, Karkat had moved on to something different.

Gamzee. A boy.

Yeah. You and Karkat have been talking a lot.

He tells you all these things about your friends but you just know, from the way that he talks, that he is so deeply hurt sometimes it’s difficult for him to just exist.

He is just like you.

You tell him tonight, after John and Jade are gone. You’re gonna wait for Rose and Kanaya to come home, she is gonna need someone who helps her tucking her blacked out girlfriend into bed.

Karkat’s answer is unexpected.

ME AND GAMZEE BROKE UP.  
ACTUALLY… I THINK WE WEREN’T IN A RELATIONSHIP. I MEAN I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO BELIEVED THAT. WEIRD, HUH?  
what? man how?  
I SAID ‘DUDE YOU ARE TOO EMOTIONALLY DRAINING FOR ME’ AND HE SAID: ‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN ARE WE TOGETHER?’ HAHA FUNNY.  
what an asshole dude  
ME OR HIM?  
of course him, you dumbass  
CAUSE DUMBASS IS SO MUCH BETTER.  


You let your emotions seep through your poker face for once. It doesn’t matter if it’s Karkat, you understood that a long while ago.

I TOLD HIM SOMETHING ELSE.  
yeah?  
HE DIDN’T CARE THOUGH. MAN, I WAS BREAKING UP WITH HIM AND HE DIDN’T CARE.  
karat come on…  
I TOLD HIM: ‘WE ARE NOT MADE FOR EACH OTHER’.  


You wait. This is a big moment. Something huge is about to happen, you know.

I’M JUST LIKE YOU, DAVE. YOU ARE RIGHT.  



End file.
